Vivianne Sassen Analemma: Fashion Photography

Flourishes of dynamic movement, of fabric that bursts out of the frame like a blossoming bud, and a peak of flesh teasing from underneath… Vivianne Sassen’s fashion portraits offer a lavish antidote to over-exposed minimalism. Hey there colour, welcome back.

Currently on show at The Photographer’s Gallery as part of their fashion season, Sassen’s Analemma series makes the body a vehicle for movement, albeit captured in a static photograph. With her crackling eye for shape and form, Sassen creates little fashion aliens out of her subjects. These beautiful freaks, with their saturated skin-tones wrapped in voluminous swathes of fabric, can be found striking a pose against a surrealist landscape or moulding their bodies into sculptural installations. Their composition owes much more to art history than to contrived fashion formulae.

Mirroring the performance element of her shoots, the 350 or so images on view are presented in a sweeping swirl of movement; projections slide across the walls and floors in a constant loop of motion. And the colour literally blooms from her photographs. Sometimes it’s sharp and graphic, cutting a bold, clashing contrast of dramatic shapes and hues. Other times it’s present as a beautifully tonal and subtle spectrum. It’s Sassen’s non-conformity, her ability to eek-out every single droplet of pigment and her contextual references to fine art, that mean her work can not be confined to, or defined by, the fashion industry.

It’s funny that colour seems to have taken on an avant-garde status in fashion, but here’s to the industry’s current renegade and her eye-popping palette of human sculptures.

Vivianne Sassen Analemma: Fashion Photography 1992 –2012 is at The Photographer’s Gallery until 18 January 2015.